Items12The creator’s order
  1. 1False Lankum (2023)False Lankum (2023)Released 24 Mar 2023The Dublin quartet treats Irish traditional ballads not as museum pieces but as living conduits of dread, tenderness and communal grief. Through droning uilleann pipes, shuddering concertina swells and four-part vocal harmonies on tracks like Go Dig My Grave, the arrangements carry the crushing…0i
  2. 2Time (The Revelator) (2001)Time (The Revelator) (2001)Released 1 Jan 2001Recorded at RCA Studio B in Nashville, this landmark album distils centuries of Appalachian ballads, country blues and old-time hymns into ten modern parables. David Rawlings's syncopated, chiming archtop guitar dances around Welch's plainspoken, ancient-sounding vocal delivery, linking the sinking…0
  3. 3Lodestar (2016)Lodestar (2016)Released 1 Jan 2016Returning after nearly four decades of vocal silence, the matriarch of the English folk revival recorded these sixteenth- to eighteenth-century English and American songs at her cottage in Lewes. Her weathered, unadorned lower register is accompanied by hurdy-gurdy, delicate fiddle and ambient…0
  4. 4Freedom Highway (2017)Freedom Highway (2017)Released 1 Jan 2017Drawing directly on nineteenth-century slave narratives, minstrel banjo techniques and African-American spirituals, Rhiannon Giddens confronts historical trauma with fierce musical clarity. Her commanding vocal range and clawhammer banjo ring out alongside fiddle, brass and beat-driven percussion,…0
  5. 5Hadestown (2010)Hadestown (2010)Released 1 Jan 2010Before expanding onto Broadway stages, Hadestown began as a concept folk opera rooted in rustic American instrumentation. Mitchell transposes the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into a dust-bowl Great Depression setting, using acoustic strings, mournful brass and an ensemble cast…0
  6. 6Here's the Tender Coming (2009)Here's the Tender Coming (2009)Released 1 Jan 2009Rachel and Becky Unthank interpret Northumbrian traditional songs with close-knit sibling harmonies that hold deep regional dignity. Setting nineteenth-century seafaring laments and dialect press-gang ballads against subtle brass band horns, string quartets and Adrian McNally's understated piano,…0
  7. 7The Gloaming (2013)The Gloaming (2013)Released 1 Jan 2013This transatlantic supergroup revitalised Irish traditional music by balancing Martin Hayes's lyrical, expressive fiddle playing against Thomas Bartlett's minimalist, contemporary piano chords. Fronted by Iarla Ó Lionáird's haunting sean-nós vocals, the quintet stretches centuries-old reels into…0
  8. 8All of This Is Chance (2023)All of This Is Chance (2023)Released 1 Jan 2023Rooted in rural County Cavan storytelling and the nature poetry of Patrick Kavanagh, Lisa O'Neill's fifth album uses a voice full of raw grit and elemental wonder. Deep orchestral drones, bowed banjo and harmonium underpinning tracks like Old Note conjure an earthy mysticism where traditional…0
  9. 9Ragged Kingdom (2011)Ragged Kingdom (2011)Released 1 Jan 2011Reunited twenty-one years after their first collaboration, Britain's premier dark traditional balladeer and folk-punk band Oysterband deliver a masterclass in dynamic tension. Tabor's aristocratic, sorrowful contralto anchors visceral reworkings of traditional murder ballads like Bonny Bunch of…0
  10. 10Crown of Horn (1976)Crown of Horn (1976)Released 1 Jan 1976Martin Carthy changed English traditional guitar accompaniment forever through percussive fingerpicking, non-standard CGCDGA tunings and rhythmic insistence. On Crown of Horn, his interpretations of songs like The Devil and the Feathery Wife and Geordie illustrate how rigorous research and rhythmic…0